Wife and I are running our excess tomatoes through our dehydrator and would like to make these little slabs into olive oil soaked snacks like are sold in grocery stores.
Anyone have experience doing this ?
We haven’t dried tomatoes yet; but a quick search brought this up:
http://www.food.com/recipe/olive-oil-packed-sun-dried-tomatoes-with-basil-497980
My grandmother in Italy used to dry them on the rooftop and then pack them in jars filled with olive oil.
Here’s a recipe I found that is similar, although she didn’t use thyme.
Homemade Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Makes an 8-ounce jar, easily doubled, tripled, etc., so long as you have oven space.
Update: a couple of notes, as apparently botulism can rear its head in the fridge, too! If you want to keep these in oil for more than 4 days, you should either freeze them or avoid flavoring the oil with garlic and leave it plain instead. Tomatoes in oil and garlic stored in home fridges can still be dangerous, so best not to test the fates.
Ingredients
1 pound plum tomatoes (5-6)
a few pinches coarse salt
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 cup olive oil (optional)
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
Preheat oven to 200°F. Place a metal rack on a baking sheet.
Cut each tomato in thirds lengthwise. Each slice should be about 1/3-inch thick.
Sprinkle salt on the cut sides of the tomatoes–not more than you’d want to eat though! Line a cutting board with a dish towel or paper towels and place the tomatoes on top. Top with another dish towel and another cutting board. Weight with a heavy cookbook or two. Leave for 20 minutes. This helps get some of the tomato’s juices out early, before they go in the oven.
Remove the tomatoes from the cutting board sandwich, dusting off any salt that hasn’t dissolved, and place them on the rack, with at least 1 inch in between. Sprinkle with the fresh thyme.
Bake for about 5 hours, until the tomatoes are dry to the touch and have wrinkled around the edges. You can really decide how dry you want them–as dry as raisins? or do you want to leave a little plumpness? Watch them (and try them) as they cook, and decide for yourself. When done, remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature.
If you’re going to be storing your tomatoes in olive oil, place the olive oil and garlic in a small jar while the tomatoes are cooking, and let the garlic steep to flavor the oil.
When the tomatoes are cool, add them to the oil. Store in the fridge for 4 days. If not using oil, store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a few weeks.
http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/2012/08/homemade-sun-dried-tomatoes.html